- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- “Those Were the Days” was a major hit in both the U.K. and the U.S.; the song even knocked the Beatles song “Hey Jude” off the top of the charts.
Mary Hopkin – Post Card (1969): Post Card is an early release by Apple Records, the Beatles’ record label, that was not a record by the Beatles (either the band as a whole or individual bandmembers). “Those Were the Days” was a major hit in both the U.K. and the U.S.; the song even knocked the Beatles song “Hey Jude” off the top of the charts in England and nearly did the same in this country. Paul McCartney was told about Mary Hopkin by the legendary British model Twiggy, and he produced the album and played acoustic guitar and bass on some tracks. Donovan wrote three of the songs, including the lovely opening track “Lord of the Reedy River”, and also contributed some guitar. George Martin, who produced nearly all of the Beatles’ records, wrote one of the songs, “The Game” and played piano on that song.
Like several of the other songs on the album (apparently that was Paul McCartney’s idea), “Those Were the Days” is an older song dating from the 1920’s; other pre-rock standards on Post Card include “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Someone to Watch over Me”, “Inchworm”, and “Love is the Sweetest Thing”. Paul McCartney and the Beatles had performed one of these songs, “The Honeymoon Song” live on the BBC in 1963. Mary Hopkin is a native of Wales, and one of the songs is in the Welsh language, “Y Blodyn Gwyn” (“White Flower”). Hopkin also recorded versions of “Those Were the Days” in Italian, Spanish, German, and French that were made available as digital downloads when Post Card was reissued on CD in 2010. Post Card is an enjoyable listen all the way through, thanks in large part to the variety of the material; and even right after I had purchased the album, I wasn’t sure that “Those Were the Days” was my favorite song on the record.